Mr. BULLITT. Well, I can explain that perhaps more briefly than in any other way by reading my letter of resignation to the President, which is brief.
Senator KNOX. Very well, we would like to hear it.
The CHAIRMAN. Before that letter is read, you did not see the President and had no knowledge of his attitude in regard to your report?
Mr. BULLITT. None whatever, except as it was reported to me by Col. House. Col. House, as I said before, reported to me that he thought in the first place that the President favored the peace proposal; in the second place, that the President could not turn his mind to it, because he was too occupied with Germany, and finally—well, really, I have no idea what was in the President's mind.
Senator KNOX. There never was another effort to secure an audience with the President for you after those first two that you say Col. House made?
Mr. BULLITT. No; not at all. Meetings with the President were always arranged through Col. House.
In my letter of resignation to the President, which was dated May 17, 1919, I said:
MAY 17, 1919.
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I have submitted to-day to the Secretary of State my resignation as an assistant in the Department of State, attaché to the American commission to negotiate peace. I was one of the millions who trusted confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed that you would take nothing less than "a permanent peace" based upon "unselfish and unbiased justice." But our Government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, and dismemberments—a new century of war. And I can convince myself no longer that effective labor for "a new world order" is possible as a servant of this Government.
Russia, "the acid test of good will," for me as for you, has not even been understood. Unjust decisions of the conference in regard to Shantung, the Tyrol, Thrace, Hungary, East Prussia, Danzig, the Saar Valley, and the abandonment of the principle of the freedom of the seas make new international conflicts certain. It is my conviction that the present league of nations will be powerless-to prevent these wars, and that the United States will be involved in them by the obligations undertaken in the covenant of the league and in the special understanding with France. Therefore the duty of the Government of the United States to its own people and to mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty, to refuse to guarantee its settlements by entering the league of nations, to refuse to entangle the United States further by the understanding with France.